First off, we'd like to thank all of our customers for their continued support and loyalty. We hope we've been fulfilling your suggestions and fixing issues to your satisfaction, and hope to be able to continue improving and supporting our products for years to come. VRS may not make a lot of products, but we certainly make high quality ones. Our mantra of quality over quantity is the reason why Superbug and TacPack customers have been enjoying continual updates since product inception.

The rate of adoption of the TacPack from third-party developers has also been phenomenal this past year. We've seen devs such as Iris, Metal2Mesh, Aerosoft, Milviz, and Dino commit to TacPack-enabled aircraft products, and the list continues to grow. We've made so many friends and gained so much support from our colleagues, that it really makes us thankful we get to do this. It's a fantastic community, and so much better than most. Competition doesn't always need to hurt devs like us. It's working...

This year, one of our goals is to actually sell some other products; You know, just so we can make some money 'n stuff. You can only stretch one or two products so far before you've got to branch out, and 2015 will be one of those rare years for us when just adding new features and stomping bugs isn't going to cut it. Of course we'll continue to do those things, but we're also going to release some new products that we hope will once again, stretch the definition of awesome.

Our Newest Team Member:With that goal in mind, VRS would very much like to introduce our newest team member, Jamal "Spins" Ingram. Jamal is a 3D modeler extraordinaire, who possesses the rare combination of outstanding technical background, experience, efficiency, and a love of the aircraft. His work is absolutely impeccable. The first time I saw what Jamal was up to with his modeling skills, it took me all of 2 minutes to shoot him an email and see if we could poach him:) Spins will be providing all of the 3D assets for our products for the foreseeable future.

At the bottom of this post you'll see a teaser of WIP, untextured images for our forthcoming F/A-18F, courtesy of Spins. The models will be many times more detailed, and much more accurate in many ways than the current F/A-18E. The product will feature approximately 4x the geometry and texture pixel density of the current (1.4.x) TacPack-enabled Superbug.

Jamal has been given the go-ahead to post anything he likes regarding the modeling development of the F/A-18F, so please give him a warm welcome when you see him, but try not to bug him too much. The man's got work to do, dammit!

The 2015 Roadmap:

Superbug/TacPack FSX Steam Edition support. Existing Superbug owners will receive this update at no cost, and it should be available shortly (late January). There were some major changes required, and in fact they're still plaguing us a bit, but she's almost ready to roll. There are some important points regarding FSX SE as follows:

Steam Edition support will be a free update for both TacPack and Superbug owners.

Steam Edition support will be mutually exclusive of FSX classic. You may run the Superbug/TacPack on FSX classic, or FSX SE, not both. This has nothing do do with licensing, and everything to do with compatibility and the reduction of unnecessary support due to the way Dovetail decided to handle coexistence. If you have questions about this, we'll be happy to answer them in the appropriate discussion forums.

Every time FSX SE is (automatically) updated by Steam, the TacPack (at least experimental features) will break, requiring a new version of the TacPack. This is currently an unavoidable issue which is also plaguing other developers including the likes of PMDG, Pete Dowson (FSUIPC), and Orbx, just to name a few. Where there are low-level "interfaces" involving the binary (.exe), there will be trouble when updates are made to it. This was never a problem with classic FSX because development was stopped at SP2/Acceleration. With Steam Edition, there are likely to be many updates, and they will for the most part be made automatically. BE WARNED.

Superbug/TacPack for Prepar3D. These will be separate products from the FSX versions, but will maintain parallel development with the FSX versions. For the most part (with exceptions), features will remain the same as the FSX version. The P3D products will be available concurrently with FSX Steam Edition support.

For a limited time subsequent to release, existing owners of either FSX Superbug or TacPack will be offered a substantial discount on the P3D Academic version cross-grade. Final P3D pricing has NOT been determined yet.

The Superbug/TackPack for P3D will be available in two flavors: Academic (personal-use for non-commercial and non-institutional entities), and Professional (for commercial and institutional use). The licensing, EULA and pricing for these two versions will be discrete and terms of use will be aggressively enforced.

The Superbug for P3D will require the TacPack for P3D, and no non-TacPack-enabled version of the Superbug will be available for P3D. In fact all of VRS' future aircraft products will require the TacPack.

Like FSX Steam Edition support, P3D support requires that a new TacPack be rolled out for every P3D version update. If you upgrade P3D without checking to see if a compatible TacPack is available, you may be temporarily grounded until we roll a new, compatible version.

P3D 1.x and 2.x will be supported. Please be patient while we prepare exact system requirements and specific platform version requirements.

Superbug AFD (a.k.a. Superbug Pro) will be a package that adds extremely high resolution flight dynamics and flight control law scheduling, high detail models, and even more advanced avionics to the existing Superbug. AFD will be an upgrade that applies to both the F/A-18E and not yet released F/A-18F products. One copy of AFD can be used to update either the E or the new F with these advanced features.

The following images, courtesy of Spins, represent a WIP of our F/A-18E and F variants. The enhanced E model will be part of the Superbug AFD (a.k.a Pro) package, and the F will be part of a new two-seater aircraft package. Enjoy, and thanks again for your support!

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Vertical Reality Simulations LLC. (DBA VRS), established in 2004, is an award-winning developer of professional-level PC-based combat aircraft simulation software. Products and solutions are available for consumer and commercial applications.